patrick brennan & Abdul Moimême in conversation about terraphonia:
You know, I was really intrigued by the timbral and textural expanse of the prepared guitars. They have distinct minds of their own & a very soundwave inflected pulsation. – p
Back in the mid 90’s, when I first came into contact with your music, I was initially perplexed by the substantial use of silences in your solo saxophone work, until I realized that, as a composer, you were allowing space for the implicit arrangements to resound in the listener’s ear. What became clear to me was that they were also an integral part of your rhythmic invention. So, when you suggested this project, I wondered how my sound might complement your sonic universe. – a
I do make a point of accenting silences for just that reason. The saxophone emerges through breath & syllabic percussion, but as flexible an acoustic instrument it may be, there’s no way it can match, or converse within, the guitars’ far broader timbral palette. The mystery for me, then, was in discovering a dialogical interface that would allow us both to interact without compromising either of our sonic or personal identities. – p
I posed myself the very same issues, as it’s one thing to have two sets of events somehow concur on parallel planes, it’s quite another to transmute them into a totally new and unique substance. – a
Still, I was still surprised by how it all found itself. What I did was listen in terms of framing your own sounds, accenting them, augmenting their clarity, following where they took me. There was a lot of freedom in discovering how to adapt to such a variegated soundscape resounding well outside the tempered pitch system that my instrument was designed for. – p
Conversely, the possibilities posed by interacting with your melodic transformations were exhilarating, sometimes functioning as an extension of that order, at other times as its deliberate contrast. – a
Yeah, collaborative differences can forge some serious alchemies. – p
Trust is essential, but when you also have friendship in the mix… what more can one ask for? – a